The Korean War (38 page)

In Tokyo, from the first moment of the Chinese intervention, MacArthur issued a flood of bulletins and statements which drifted further and further from reality as each day went by. First, he declared that his own drive to the Yalu had forced the Chinese hand, interrupting plans for a grand communist offensive which would have been disastrous for the United Nations. He rejected utterly the suggestion that his forces were engaged in a retreat. He castigated ‘ignorant’ correspondents for their inability to distinguish between a planned withdrawal and a ‘full flight’. His flights of Olympian rhetoric contrasted ever more grotesquely with the reality of what was taking place within his command: ‘Never before has the patience of man been more sorely tried nor high standards of human behaviour been more patiently tried and firmly upheld than during the course of the Korean campaigns.’ He cast direct blame upon the Administration in Washington for imposing restrictions upon bombing and military operations beyond the Yalu – ‘an enormous handicap, without precedent in military history’.
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Harry Truman wrote: ‘Now, no one is blaming General MacArthur, and certainly I never did, for the failure of the November offensive . . . But . . . I do blame General MacArthur for the manner in which he tried to excuse his failure.’
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When the British General Sir Robert Mansergh met MacArthur in Tokyo at this period, he found him intensely emotional:

At these times, he appeared to be much older than his 70 years . . . Signs of nerves and strain were apparent . . . When he emphasised the combined efforts and successes of all front-line troops in standing shoulder to shoulder, and dying if necessary in their fight against communism, it occurred to me that he could not have been fully in the picture. I cannot believe he would have made these comments in such a way if he had been in full possession of facts which I would inevitably learn later, that some Americans had been far from staunch. It occurred to me then, and was emphasised later, that the war in Korea is reproduced in Tokyo with certain omissions of the more unpalatable facts.
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And if MacArthur was prey to powerful private delusions about what was taking place within his command, he was also entering perilous political waters with his public statements about the course of things to come. His enigmatic comments, when questioned by a magazine interviewer about the desirability of employing the atomic bomb, left little to the imagination.

Question: Can anything be said as to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the bomb in the type of operations in which you are now engaged?

Answer: My comment at this time would be inappropriate.

Question: In the type of warfare now going on in Korea, are there large enough concentrations of enemy troops to make the bomb effective?

Answer: My comment at this time would be inappropriate.
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But if MacArthur was alone in declining to deny publicly the merits of employing atomic weapons, a large company within the military were privately thinking furiously about the possibilities. On 20 November, J. Lawton Collins told colleagues it was conceivable that the JCS would be called upon to present views about the use of atomic weapons.

Then, at a press conference on 30 November, President Truman allowed himself to be trapped into making a statement on the atomic bomb which reverberated around the world, caused consternation among America’s allies, the repercussions of which were never entirely stilled for the remainder of the Korean War. Truman declared that the United States would take ‘whatever steps
are necessary to meet the military situation’. A reporter inquired: ‘Will that include the atomic bomb?’

Truman said: ‘That includes every weapon we have.’

‘Mr President, you said, “every weapon we have”. Does that mean that there has been active consideration of the use of the atomic bomb?’

‘There has always been active consideration of its use . . .’

Among America’s allies, above all in Europe, unease had been mounting for many months about developments across the Atlantic. The stridency of conservative Cold War rhetoric; the rise of McCarthy; increasing fears in government circles, prompted by diplomatic reports from Tokyo about the extravagances of MacArthur, coupled with the Administration’s inability to control him, had combined to create the gravest unease about the course on which the United States might be headed. For the most part, real fear of what the Russians might attempt, matched by nervousness about any statement that might encourage American isolationism – above all a possible American retreat from Europe – encouraged discretion in Allied public statements about Washington policy. The British had never been enthusiastic about the commitment to Korea. Henceforward, they were the most reluctant partners in the war. As early as 13 November, the Cabinet’s OS Committee reported its view:

that it was no longer practicable, without risking a major war, to attain the original objective of occupying the whole of North Korea and placing it under a UN regimen. They were doubtful whether the UN forces could reach the northern frontier without making air attacks on targets in Manchuria, and even if the frontier could he reached, it would be a difficult task to hold it along a line of about 450 miles in mountainous country. Korea was of no strategic importance to the democratic powers; and further operations there should now be conducted with a view to preventing any extension of the conflict and avoiding any lasting commitment in the area. The Chiefs of Staff favour shorter lines along the 40th Parallel.
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Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, said ‘he was anxious to prevent the US Government from being led by their military advisers into policies which would provoke further intervention by China. He was also anxious to do everything he could to allay the reasonable fears of the Chinese lest the Western Powers should occupy large areas of Asian territory under a plea of military necessity.’ By 29 November, Bevin was adopting a more phlegmatic view in Cabinet: ‘If we had to fight the Chinese, it was much better, from both the political and military point of view, that we should do so in North Korea . . . his conclusion was that, although the situation was serious, it was not out of hand.’ But he remained apprehensive that MacArthur would press his demand to be allowed to bomb north of the Yalu. It is interesting that, in all the British Cabinet debates about Korea, there is virtually no evidence of discussion about the interests of the Korean people, beyond a remark of Bevin’s in October that ‘there was little doubt that the Koreans on both sides had conducted the war in a barbarous fashion’. To the British, as to the Americans, Korea was a battlefield upon which the will of the West was being tested, and a vital principle being reluctantly upheld. No more, no less.

Public support for the war in Korea had been waning rapidly in Britain through the autumn. In a passionate speech to the Labour Party Conference on 2 October, Bevin sought to chastise the fainthearts and the waverers. It was ludicrous to suggest, he declared, that there had ever been an alternative to intervention in Korea:

Do you think we like it? Do you think, after all the years of fighting we have done in the Labour movement in the hope of getting a peaceful world, that we like having to do it? Is there any Minister who likes to go down to the House of Commons to ask for £3,600 million for war? . . . Is there any delegate in this conference who would go back to his constituents and say we are doing wrong in paying the proper insurance premium now for our security? We blamed the Conservatives for knowing Hitler was on the move and not making adequate preparations . . . because they would not go in for collective security . . . We are in office now, and shall we refuse to do what we called upon others to do which would have prevented the 1939 war if they had only done it.
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The Americans recognised Bevin as the only British Cabinet Minister after Attlee of real international stature. Yet the Foreign Secretary, a tired and sick man, received no ovation or vote of thanks. The defence chiefs were now declaring that they would need at least £3,800 million, which Britain did not have, to fund the rearmament programme. On 29 November, the House of Commons showed real irritation with Bevin’s evident ignorance of what was happening in Korea. British fear, frustration and uncertainty about where the Allies were being led by MacArthur were becoming daily more acute. The Americans, in their turn, were exasperated by Allied hand-wringing about the possible consequences of UN actions, when faced with the immediate reality of defeat on the battlefield. Britain could have it one way or the other, Washington felt: she could accept responsibilities as a major ally and first-class power, and be treated accordingly; or she could bow to the economic need to withdraw from those responsibilities, and acknowledge the eclipse of her influence upon the United States.

But it would be many years before the British people were ready to face the issues in such bald terms. Truman’s statement of 30 November, publicly declining to exclude the nuclear option in Korea, provoked the British to new ecstasies of uncertainty. In a debate that evening in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin made it apparent that he had no clear idea of American intentions towards China, or indeed of any change in American policy in the Far East. The Tory front bencher R. A. Butler said:

I want to come immediately to some circumstances which have arisen this evening, and which have caused many of us great concern and anxiety . . . I want to express, at any rate on my own behalf, and I believe on behalf of a great many other Hon. Members, my very great disquiet – the horror that many of us would feel at the use of this weapon in circumstances which were not such that our own moral conscience was satisfied that there was no alternative.

Attlee, the Prime Minister, expressed his wholehearted sympathy and agreement with Butler. Even Churchill, whom no one had accused of lack of zeal in the confrontation with communism, declared in the House of Commons: ‘The United Nations should avoid by every means in their power becoming entangled inextricably in a war with China . . . the sooner the Far Eastern diversion . . . can be brought into something like a static condition and stabilised, the better it will be . . . For it is in Europe that the world cause will be decided . . . it is there that the mortal danger lies.’ Attlee concluded the debate by announcing that he proposed himself to fly to Washington to meet the President.

If Britain was always the most junior of partners with the United States in the struggle to defend South Korea, in 1950 she also remained indisputably the second non-communist power on earth, the most important ally of the United States. Attlee’s meeting with Truman in December 1950 provided both sides with a valuable opportunity to articulate their private convictions about the state of the global confrontation. As had been the case since the Korean War began, British views were coloured by fear that American strategic attentions were being diverted from Europe, towards the Far East. The British were also profoundly opposed to confrontation with China, given their own vital trade interests in the Far East. Attlee arrived in Washington as ‘more than the spokesman of the United Kingdom and even the USA’s allies in NATO’. He also represented ‘the fears and doubts of all the states which had supported the original decision by the UN to resist the North Korean attack’.
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Truman, meanwhile, came to the conference table as leader of an Administration which was even now suffering humiliating defeat upon the battlefield; and which stood
beleaguered by its political critics at home. Senator McCarthy was demanding the resignations of Acheson and Marshall, and threatening impeachment proceedings against the President himself. Attlee’s very coming provided more ammunition for Truman’s Republican critics, for it supplied fresh evidence of the unwelcome influence of enfeebled Europeans upon American policy, the very force that they alleged had done so much to ‘lose’ China for the United States. Even had Washington been immersed in torrential downpours, the British were wise to arrive with no umbrellas at the airport.

The discussions that began on 5 December, and included both British and American Chiefs of Staff, were held under the shadow of real fear that the United Nations might be compelled to evacuate the Korean peninsula. One of Field-Marshal Slim’s first questions to the American delegation was whether MacArthur had been ordered to withdraw. Marshall told him that no such order had been given, but that the Supreme Commander had been told that ‘the security of his command is his first consideration’. Probably the chief significance of the discussions was the reassurance that Attlee gained from Truman, that the United States was
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actively considering the employment of nuclear weapons in Asia. Much discussion also centred upon British economic and financial difficulties in sustaining their programme of rearmament, which Washington strongly supported. At this time, the United States possessed an extraordinary proportion of the world’s stockpile of vital metals and other strategic materials. The British made it clear that, without greater access to these, their defence build-up could not continue.

Sir Oliver Franks, the British Ambassador in Washington whose close friendship with Acheson made him a key participant in the talks, believed that the Administration never seriously considered the use of nuclear weapons in Korea. In this, he may have underestimated the pressures that would have closed in upon Truman, had the Americans been driven out of Korea with heavy loss. And even Franks, like Attlee, acknowledged fears about what the
Americans might do ‘if their backs were to the wall. There was a fear of the consequences of hot pursuit into China, or bombing across the Yalu. There was a fear that War, with a capital W, might break out in the Far East. The last thing that we wanted to see was the United States getting bogged down with China, because we saw no end to it.’
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